Why You Should Add More Breaks into Your Workday

Key Takeaways:

• Evaluate the current state of your schedule
• Consider the intentions for your work
• Commit to time alone as a way to recalibrate

For many leaders, each moment of their day is booked solid and they may feel pressure to take early meetings, squeeze in calls over lunch, take late meetings and calls or reply to demanding requests into the evening hours. Can you relate?

If you accept these requests, you will likely receive more of them.

What words come to mind when considering your schedule? Would you label these words as positive, neutral or negative? How we describe our world matters; words have creative power over how we feel and how people around us feel.

How many minutes of your day are for you? Do you feel guilty about protecting your “you” time when you “should” be helping your team or responding to others? Remember this is your life and you are allowed to make an impact in the way you choose. You are the designer of this life. Many leaders choose to include quiet time to reflect as part of their respective routines.

Slowing down, pausing and taking intentional breaths can shift you into more mindful living. Part of mindful living is how you manage your time.

Having a blank slate (i.e. unscheduled time) is one of the biggest ways to increase creativity. No expected outcome, no rushing. Unscheduled pockets of time can lead you to being more in touch with yourself and more creative.

Just as the body needs time to digest food, it is good to mentally digest some of the social interactions you have in your day. Along with the positive emotions, work can also bring up disappointment and frustration and having some time built in to reset is useful. Negative emotions can take over and show themselves in unintended ways if not worked through.

Being alone helps you get back in touch with your intention for work and ultimately your life. When you make appointments with yourself you can use the time to meditate, sit in silence, exercise, power nap or journal. You may also realize that a slower pace can help you be more in touch with nature and nutrition.

Here is a journaling activity you may consider to do during a planned reflective break as part of your workday. Take 10-15 minutes to respond to the following:

• What is your intention for how you relate to yourself?
• What is your intention for how you relate to others?
• What is your intention for your work product?
• How can you stay in your intention when the pressure is on?

Thank you for your presence while reading this. There will always be more work, but you will not be able to go back and redo your interactions with more presence, calm or clarity. Taking some time to slow down and be intentional will have noticeable rewards.

Go forward and make today excellent.